Sorrow In Autumn

Chapter 7. The Blade of a Hero

For Akai_Seirei. All my love sweetie!

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A qiao is a sword sheath.

A dizi is a Chinese flute. A ruanqin or ruan is a a lute with a fretted neck, a circular body, and four strings. It sounds just like a guitar which Zhu Yilong plays. If you would like to hear it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-PUZxrdRG8

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I was going to write more about the end of the three days but most readers are really hoping to get to the Kunlun part.

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The sky was tinged with the promise of winter, the dawn a faint glow of pale hues in the far distance. As if the sun feared to disturb the grief soaked pain of the man sitting sleepless.

The circular window was shrouded against the coming light, shielding the treasures from the threat of fading colors.

Paintings in exquisite detail filled the room from floor to ceiling leaving only three spaces bare on the south wall, opposite the window. Each one lovingly painted, stood as a shrine to one man. A man with the same face.

Zhao Yunlan in a hundred different situations, different moods and yet each was so passionately rendered, it felt as though the man in the painting, could come alive at any moment.

The love sheltered in Shen Wei's heart, was what shimmered through each one, taking paint and transforming it into a memory.

The warm curve of a cheek, the glint of a hairpin...the twisted complex braids that flowed down a strong shoulder. A smile, the fierce glare of a battle hardened soldier...the sultry, tired look of a man afraid they might not see another dawn. The fearless laughter, obsidian eyes gleaming with boundless amusement.

The door was locked with eight boundary locks, all of them Kunlun's inventions.

On the floor against the wall missing the three portraits, ones he had yet to paint, Shen Wei took a deep breath.

On his lap was a sword, his hand on the hilt white-knuckled.

A sword that was known to many and recognizable only to a few. Impossibly sharp and imbued with arcane power, it gleamed in the still air halfway between morning's relief and night's sanctuary. It was a weapon of death and in deft hands it had claimed the life of many, on the battlefields of the war.

It was a wide blade, long and straight with a sharply angled tip. The bronze hilt was twice the length of his own with a double grip, etched in gold. A swirling square pattern, reminding him of intricate braids wound around the hilt and part of the blade.

This blade was a greater treasure to him than anything in the vault of Dixing.

This was Kunlun's dao.

He had woken curled into the blankets and furs of Kunlun's bed, inches from its charcoal black qiao. The qiao was missing, but Shen Wei had commissioned a replacement, near identical to the old one.

He ahd pulled it free from Kunlun's belt in his haste to loosen both robes and armor. He had watched his love strap it to his back, to his side and tuck it beneath a cloak. He had watched Kunlun throw it to the ground in frustration inside cavern rooms or a tent and onto a bedroll. Kunlun had tucked it between them, as they lay side-by-side waiting for an attack, underneath an inn bed and at his elbow when he slept...

Shen Wei had seen it slash down from the saddle of a warhorse, swung high in the air through a field of raging soldiers. Held aloft to embolden their own forces and thrown with deadly accuracy into the chest of the Crown Prince of Southern Haixing.